Interview: Sarah MacLean, 'One Good Earl Deserves a Lover'

Interview: Sarah MacLean, 'One Good Earl Deserves a Lover'

What happens to an imaginative young woman from a small Rhode Island town who loves history and reading? She puts her imagination to work and becomes a USA TODAY and New York Times best-selling author. Or she does if she’s Sarah MacLean. MacLean found adventure in books, especially classic historical romances and Jane Austen and is now known for her charming Regencies. MacLean set some time aside for us last week to talk about her love of historical romance, the insanity inherent in writing fiction, and her most recent release, One Good Earl Deserves a Lover.

Pamela: Welcome to HEA, Sarah! Congratulations on your new release!

Sarah: Thank you so much for having me, Pamela … I’m really thrilled to be with you this week!

Pamela: You grew up in Rhode Island obsessed with historical romance. What was the first historical romance you read? Which one inspired you the most to take up the pen yourself?

Sarah: Like so many others, I came to romance during the golden age of it — Judith McNaught, Julie Garwood, Johanna Lindsey and Jude Deveraux were at the height of their historical domination. Without those women, I wouldn’t be a romance novelist. I often find myself rereading those books when I’m deep in a book, trying to find the exact moment, the exact page, the exact turn of phrase that won me to the heroes and heroines and the genre itself. Almost Heaven, The Black Lyon (my first romance), The Gift, Gentle Rogue. Those stories that made me love romance … and I try hard to keep their magic alive in my own writing.

Pamela: A lot of authors say their characters “talk” to them. But you say yours don’t. How do you get to know them? How do you build characters?

Sarah: For the most part, my characters don’t talk to me. I like to lord over them like some kind of benevolent deity. And, for the most part, my characters go along with it. I write intense character sketches and long, play-like conversations between me and them, but they stay out of the book writing itself.

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Not so with One Good Earl Deserves a Lover, however. Pippa had a very real sense of how her story would be told. It was the first time that a character muscled her way into my life, and once she announced that she’d like a book, the whole thing was a little bit in her hands. This was a supremely terrifying experience for me, in part because it was so different than all my other books. I don’t like being so totally out of control!

Pamela: You’ve described your writing process as varying to some degree from book to book, saying that you spend a certain amount of time being “insane” before you hit “the zone.” I’m certain a lot of writers identify with that. What is that insanity about? What helps you find the zone?

Sarah: Some writer far more insightful than I am once said that you never learn to write a book — you only learn to write the book you are writing. As a control freak (see above), this makes the writing process rather painful for me — because I really want to be good at it. I want to wake up one morning and know how to write page one, or page 10, or page 250. But I never seem to know how to do it. Every book is different and takes a different structure, style, process, etc. And relearning how to write is where the insanity comes from. Because I’m sure that I knew how to do this yesterday and somehow, today, it’s all gone from my head.

As for the zone, I always find the zone immediately after I am sure I will never ever find the zone again because it has left me for some other, better writer. It usually comes two months before the book is due, after much crying and pulling of hair and threatening to become an alcoholic — because it worked for Hemingway, after all.

Pamela: “You never learn to write a book — you only learn to write the book you are writing.” I love that! I think most writers can empathize with the crying and hair-pulling phase of writing a book. It does feel a bit like insanity, doesn’t it?

Your latest release, One Good Earl Deserves a Lover, was supposed to come after Temple’s story. How did this novel nudge its way up to the top?

Sarah: Remember how I told you that Pippa muscled her way in? She wasn’t leaving until she got her story — and Temple’s story is one I’ve known from the very moment I conceived of the series — so he had to take a breather while I gave Cross his love. Now, it’s hard to imagine any other order, as Temple and Chase’s (my remaining two scoundrels) stories are intertwined in an unexpected way. I suppose everything happens for a reason!

Pamela: Let’s talk about Lady Philippa Marbury, or Pippa, for a moment. Is it true that you never envisioned her as a heroine? How did she change your mind?

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Sarah: She wasn’t supposed to be a heroine, that’s true. She was supposed to be the younger sister of the heroine of A Rogue By Any Other Name, and she was supposed to go quietly off into the mist, married to a decent (if slightly dull) man. But she got interesting — she was intelligent and forthright, and there were all kinds of things that I knew about her that I don’t know about most of my secondary characters. That’s when I knew I was in trouble.

And then, when I was done with Rogue, and I sat down to write the epilogue, Pippa was there. On the page. With Cross. And it was too good of a scene to leave out of the book. So … a heroine was born.

Pamela: What can you tell us about Pippa and Cross’ story and how it fits in with this series?

Sarah: The Rules of Scoundrels series tells the story of four fallen aristocrats — Bourne, Cross, Temple & Chase — each exiled from society either by chance or by choice, and now royalty in the London underworld as owners of a scandalous, exclusive casino: The Fallen Angel.

One Good Earl Deserves a Lover is Cross’s chance at love — Cross, the tall, charming, ginger-haired financier of the club. He’s a math genius and a man of letters, with a dark past that has closed him off from the world. He’s unprepared for Lady Philippa Marbury, blonde, bespectacled and totally bizarre, who arrives on his doorstep asking for lessons in the most scandalous parts of life. But Pippa has a way of getting what she wants … and Cross is doomed from the start.

The whole series is about bad boys and the women who save them … and when I sat down to map out each book, I knew these women would have to be incredibly strong to bring these men back into the light — and these heroines tend to steal the show!

Pamela: What a wonderful series! What are you working on now? And when will readers get Temple’s story?

Sarah: I’m deep into Temple’s book, No Good Duke Goes Unpunished, which is the third in the series and due out in the fall. Temple is the opposite of quiet, perfect, cerebral Cross — all physical — a broken-nosed, bare-knuckle boxer who, aside from being massive, brutally intense and wickedly sexual, is widely believed to be a killer. He’s unlike any hero I’ve ever written, and I’m really enjoying writing this book!

Pamela: He certainly sounds like a handful! Thanks for taking the time to talk with us here at HEA! Happy writing!

Pamela Clare is an award-winning journalist and nationally best-selling author of both historical romance and contemporary romantic suspense. She loves coffee, the Colorado mountains, and her two grown sons. Her website is PamelaClare.com.